GEORGE ORWELL vs ALDOUS HUXLEY
What should we fear more,
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" or "Brave New World"?
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" or "Brave New World"?
What do these novels have in common?
Brave New World is
a dystopian novel by
English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932.
Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are
environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social
hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are
combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single
individual: the story's protagonist.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) |
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel
by English novelist George Orwell. It was published in June 1949.
Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centres on the consequences of
government over-reach, totalitarianism, mass
surveillance, and repressive regimentation of all persons and behaviours
within society.
The story takes place in an imagined
future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual
war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda.
Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the
Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and
independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the
Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that
he may not exist. The protagonist, Winston
Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Party member who
secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters a forbidden
relationship with a co-worker, Julia.
Nineteen
Eighty-Four has become a classic literary example of political and
dystopian fiction. Many terms used in the novel have entered common usage,
including Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, prole, and memory
hole. Nineteen Eighty-Four also popularised the adjective "Orwellian",
connoting things such as official deception, secret surveillance, brazenly
misleading terminology, and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian
or authoritarian state.
"Amusing ourselves to death", by Stuart MacMillen